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French Beans

A pickled green bean dish preserved in a brine of salt, vinegar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

French Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Brine the beans

  1. Make a strong brine by dissolving the salt in water.

  2. Gather the beans before they have strings and lay them in the brine until they turn yellow.

Pickle

  1. Drain the beans and pour boiling hot vinegar over them.

  2. Seal the container tightly and let it sit for one day and night.

  3. Boil the vinegar and pour it over the beans again for several days until they turn green.

Spice

  1. Add the pepper, mace, and cloves to the beans.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Green beans + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together40 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  4. Green beans + peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together369 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Green beans
The main vegetable, which softens in the brine and vinegar and takes on the pickled flavor and color.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the beans in the brine, firming their texture and seasoning them.
Vinegar
Its acidity preserves the beans and gives the pickle its sharp, tangy flavor.
Black pepper
Adds sharp, warm aroma and flavor to the pickled beans.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavor to the pickle.
Cloves
Adds a strong, warm aroma to the pickle.

The step that matters

Pour boiling hot vinegar over the beans. Hot vinegar penetrates the beans more readily and its acidity helps preserve them. The beans must stay fully covered by the liquid, since any exposed part can spoil or discolor.

Swap the green beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, pepper, mace, clove):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Green beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, pepper, mace, clove. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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